During the 2006 NBA Finals, Anthony Lapsley went with some friends to a local bar to watch Game 5 and sat near a patron who was clearly distressed.

“He obviously had money on the game,” Lapsley told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com), “and he was losing.”

The stranger slid a full pitcher of beer down to Lapsley and his friends and said he no longer wanted it. Both parties, it seemed, were down on their luck.

Lapsley was a few years removed from a state championship high school wrestling career he first entered, in part, because he was one of the smallest kids at his Fort Wayne, Ind., high school. He was going through a period in his life without much direction.

Then, he found some through a former world champion arm wrestler who passed him a pitcher of beer.

The man at the bar – Andrew “Cobra” Rhodes – also had mixed-martial-arts connections, as well as a respected standing in the world of arm wrestling. From that first meeting, Lapsley built his fighting career.

The 31-year-old Indianapolis resident hopes to take the next step on Saturday when he faces Jay Hieron in an opening-round matchup in Bellator Fighting Championships’ welterweight tournament. The event, Bellator 35, kicks off Bellator’s first season on MTV2 and airs live from the Tachi Palace Casino and Resort in Lemoore, California.

Lapsley is a replacement for Steve Carl, who suffered an undisclosed injury in training. So Lapsley, who has compiled a 19-4 record as a professional since learning in two amateur fights that his wrestling background and enthusiasm could only get him so far, gets the shot to advance against the 19-4 Hieron.

Lapsley will try to continue a four-fight win streak that began with his single Bellator appearance, a second-round rear-naked choke submission of Ryan Williams in May 2009. To him, this is his biggest fight yet.

“This will change my life, and it’ll change my kids’ lives,” Lapsley said of his eight children, who range in age from 1 to 13. “I need this money, and this can make me a who’s who in the sport.

“I’m out here trying to make a statement. I’ve been in the game for five years, and still no one really knows or respects my skills. I want to show them what I’m capable of.”

One of the smallest

Few knew what Lapsley would be capable of during his childhood in Boston before the family moved to Fort Wayne when he was about 11.

Lapsley continually was one of the smallest kids in his school. He had family support from his mother, who worked at an insurance company, and a father, who moved from construction work into owning his own janitorial-services company.

Always interested in sports, especially basketball, Lapsley enjoyed playing as a kid. Until he moved to Indiana.

“We moved, and all of a sudden I was too small for everything,” he said. “These corn-fed kids here were way more grownup and bigger than I was.”

Lapsley played football during his freshman year of high school, but his size made it a challenge. After the last game of the season, a coach asked him – at 5-feet-6 and 106 pounds – if he wanted to try wrestling.

He knew some basics of the sport, or at least enough to realize that it wasn’t like the pro wrestling on television he loved growing up. Eventually, he became a state champion – and before his friends on the football team did.

But after high school, he missed the academic requirements to take a wrestling scholarship, and he continued to promise himself he would try another year. Then another. Then another. Finally, he said, he had children to support and no steady way to do it.

That’s when he bumped into the arm-wrestling world champion, and they swapped stories about athletic backgrounds. Rhodes said he knew some people in the local MMA world, and he passed his number to Lapsley in case he would like to try.

“Two weeks later, I’m depressed, and I’m thinking I’ll give him a call,” Lapsley said. “I start dialing his number, and he called me. Like, literally right at the same moment, and I hadn’t talked to him for two weeks. It was like it was meant to be.”

Remembering the losses

Lapsley took his first amateur fight with virtually no training, and it ended in a submission loss despite his aggressiveness and skill in contact.

Another amateur loss proved to Lapsley that he both liked the fighting game but that he needed help to improve. He started in a local gym with the basics, and he tried to learn as much as possible.

“I’m a sponge,” he said. “I try to look up or learn whatever I can, and then I practice it or use it.”

Lapsley’s first professional fight came in June 2006, and he won his first seven fights. His eighth fight, against future WEC title challenger Carlo Prater, ended in a unanimous-decision loss in March 2007 that he still feels he won. He remembers that feeling still.

“It taught me I can’t leave it open to the judges,” he said. “I have to finish the fight.”

In fact, of his 19 wins, 13 have come by submission and three by knockout, so he has finished plenty. The fights that stand out most in his mind, though, are the losses.

In December 2008, Lapsley faced Mike “Joker” Guymon, who would soon go on to the UFC, at a King of the Cage show. Issues in his personal life kept Lapsley from training like he usually would, and the fight ended with a fifth-round triangle-choke loss. That was his last defeat.

In winning four straight, Lapsley has worked to gain notoriety while making his record more impressive. His Saturday opportunity, he said, is his biggest chance for that yet.

“I’m doing this for my family,” he said. “For my kids, and my parents, who never left me. I didn’t know if I would get here, and now I have to make it happen.”

Award-winning newspaper reporter Kyle Nagel is the lead features writer for MMAjunkie.com. His weekly “Fight Path” column focuses on the circumstances that led fighters to a profession in MMA. Know a fighter with an interesting story? Email us at news [at] mmajunkie.com.

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